The Republic of Korea (South Korea)
Government Training Initiatives
In pre-service training, students are required to take from six to 20 credits of ICT courses. Teacher colleges and colleges of education are offering new courses on information and ICT use, updating teaching-learning methods and integrating ICT use in all classes. A significant amount of funding has been allocated to teachers’ colleges to install the necessary hardware and software and to provide a proper learning environment. At the inservice training level, one-third of the teachers have received training every year since 2002.
The training is divided into five target groups: inservice teachers, principals or vice-principals, professional instructors, ICT specialists and exemplary teachers. The content of the training includes information literacy, multimedia courseware development and use of ICT in the teaching-learning process. As teachers have shown more interest in learning how to integrate ICT in their classroom teaching than in learning how to develop courseware, a Plan for ICT Use: Training Program Development by Subject was undertaken in 2002 as a two-year project. The plan seeks to document the teaching-learning goals of the 10 basic subjects from the Seventh School Curriculum. Under the plan a teaching-learning model is to be developed for ICT use in each subject and implemented in the classroom teaching. The process of implementation is meant to be documented and then adapted to the teacher training programmes. A total of 11 subject training programmes were developed and 20 teaching-learning models in five subjects for ICT use were completed.
KERIS has been the main organisation for providing teacher training; however, 46 institutions are now certified as distance education institutions for teacher training. They include teacher colleges, colleges of education, private sector organisations and city and province training institutions. Outside these organisations, teachers have shown the initiative to learn more about ICT use in education on their own. Many have organised study groups on each subject by city or by province and have met for lectures, seminars, workshops, symposiums and to develop educational materials.